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All the people of the town gathered in crowds outside the Mosque. The carpenters brought their saws and hammers, the butchers came with their knives, the bricklayers and builders shouldered their spades, all these men, incited by the frenzied Mullás, were eager to share in the honour of killing Him. Inside the Mosque were assembled the doctors of religion.
Beginning with the private houses so occupied, they broke open the doors and windows; and while they destroyed the furniture and left but the bare walls, made a sharp search for tools and engines of destruction, such as hammers, pokers, axes, saws, and such like instruments.
It is hot and has a metallic flavor; and it flies from the hot steel teeth of the saws, as pestilence from the hot breath of the swamps. It is linty, furry, tickling, smothering, searing. It makes one wonder why, in picturing hell, no priest ever thought of filling it with cotton-gin dust instead of fire. And it clings there from the Lint to the Loom.
The second half of February produced no important change in our situation. Early in the morning of the 14th I ordered a good head of steam on the engines and sent all hands on to the floe with ice- chisels, prickers, saws, and picks. We worked all day and throughout most of the next day in a strenuous effort to get the ship into the lead ahead.
Trees were felled, with axes and saws that had been aboard the WHIZZER, and bound together, in rude fashion, with strong trailing vines from the forest. A smaller raft, as a sort of ferry, was also made. This occupied them all that day, and part of the next. In the meanwhile, Tom continued to flash out his appeals for help, but no answers came.
All these were wanting; the person I wished to improve, saw in me nothing but an importunate, chattering pedant: while on the contrary he admired his own importance in the house, measuring the services he thought he rendered by the noise he made, and looking on his saws, hatchets, and pick-axes, as infinitely more useful than all my old books: and, perhaps, in this particular, he might not be altogether blamable; but he gave himself a number of airs sufficient to make anyone die with laughter.
But I am glad you are come: I would sooner have one of your kind looks at your uncle's stale saws or jests than all the long faces about me, saving only the presence of your mother;" and with his characteristic gallantry, my uncle turned courteously to her.
They make a desperate attempt to escape from reflection by taking hold of any whim or fancy that crosses their minds, or by throwing themselves implicitly on old habits and attachments. An old man is twice a child: the dying man becomes the property of his family. He has no choice left, and his voluntary power is merged in old saws and prescriptive usages.
Orderlies went flying through the city with summons that must be obeyed. The signal corps flashed their green and red lights from the tower to distant armories. Ambulance corps hastened their preparation, packing saws, knives, lint, and bandages.
So I pass the time in Nikolai's workshop, where there are many kinds of planes and saws and drills and lathes, and there I fashion strange things. For the small boys of the neighboring farm, I make a windmill that will really turn in the wind. It whirls and rattles well, and I remember my own childhood when we called this apparatus onomatopoeically a windwhirr.
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